Dominant Daughter Stories

Dominant Daughter Stories

Toggle navigation

Main menu

You have 4 free items remaining before a subscription is required. Subscribe now! | Log in

Posted

Tuesday,
March 23, 2010
5:00 pm

The Western Flyer returned to the water for the first time in nine years following an extensive restoration effort at Port Townsend's Boat Haven.

Brian Kelly of the Leader was there for the big …
Jefferson County Commissioner Kate Dean said the Jefferson County Board of Health may consider a proclamation in support of women’s rights on reproductive …
The city of Port Townsend was expected to vote on a vehicle idling ban ordinance this week, which was first put forward by Port Townsend High students in a city council meeting in June.

The …

News
Arts & Entertainment
Sports
Calendar
Opinion

Obituaries
Classifieds
Submit news
Special sections
Web extras

Services

About Us

Contact Us

Report News

Subscribe

Where to find the Leader

© Copyright 2022 Port Townsend Leader |
Terms of Use / Privacy Policy |

She was a straight-A student, a child prodigy attending Harvard Extension courses, on her own at age 16 in Cambridge, Mass., in 1997. Her father, Port Townsend resident Bob Febos, couldn’t have …
This item is available in full to subscribers.

We have recently launched a new and improved website. To continue reading, you will need to either log into your subscriber account, or purchase a new subscription.

If you had an active account on our previous website, then you have an account here. Simply reset your password to regain access to your account.

If you did not have an account on our previous website, but are a current print subscriber, click here to set up your website account.

Otherwise, click here to view your options for subscribing.

* Having trouble? Call our circulation department at 360-385-2900, or email our support .

If you're a print subscriber, but do not yet have an online account, click here to create one.

Click here to see your options for becoming a subscriber.

If you'd like to post an event to our calendar, you can create a free account by clicking here .

Note that free accounts do not have access to our subscriber-only content.

It wasn’t easy for Bob Febos to read “Whip Smart,” written by his daughter Melissa Febos. Now he’s just grateful her story didn’t end with her death.
She was a straight-A student, a child prodigy attending Harvard Extension courses, on her own at age 16 in Cambridge, Mass., in 1997. Her father, Port Townsend resident Bob Febos, couldn’t have been any prouder.
Bob Febos is still immeasurably proud of his daughter. You can see it in his face. But he worries that others will judge her. And that they will judge him as a parent.
Today, Melissa Febos, 29, is the author of the just-released memoir “Whip Smart” (St. Martin’s Press), in which she tells the story of her addiction to heroin and cocaine and her four years working as a dominatrix in a New York City midtown “dungeon.”
It’s a situation a lot of parents face, though perhaps not to this extreme: Learning that your child has done something you never imagined she had the capacity to do. Learning that she has suffered without your knowledge.
Febos discovered Melissa’s untoward private life on two separate occasions. The first revelation came on a day of celebration – Melissa’s 2003 summa cum laude graduation from The New School, a progressive university centered in Greenwich Village in New York City. As a large group of family and friends strolled down the sidewalk headed for a celebratory dinner, Melissa’s brother handed her a card.
The card was an original created by him; he already knew what his sister was up to. On it, he’d drawn a picture of her in a cap and gown holding a whip.
“She opened it up, and closed it really quickly,” said Bob. “I saw a glimpse of a whip and said, ‘What’s this all about?'
“She said, ‘Dad, I have something to tell you.’”
In awkward whispers, Melissa revealed where her income had been coming from. Up until then, Bob had been told she worked in the catering business.
Bob Febos wasn’t completely naive. He had, by coincidence, known a woman who had also been a dominatrix, and he’d run his friend through a host of questions. Febos already knew that dominatrices do not engage in sex with their clients, and he also knew what they did do – everything from role-playing to acts of borderline torture.
Melissa Febos, who had told her mother what she was up to before graduation day, said she wasn’t purposely keeping this information from her dad, a sea captain with the Merchant Marine. At the time, she said, she didn’t see him very often.
“I largely avoided the topic with both of my parents. I didn’t want to invite the opportunity to object to it.
“Also, he’s my father. I really didn’t know how he would react. I knew it could go one of two ways, so I was sort of stalling telling him.”
Did he ask her why she would want to be a dominatrix?
“She’s always been a bit of an explorer,” he said. “I guess my first reaction was, ‘There she is again, always having to push the edge, looking at all sides of life.’”
Neither Febos nor his former wife and good friend, Nancy, learned of Melissa’s drug addiction until the book was in the proofing stage. Shortly before Father’s Day 2009, Melissa sent galley copies to each parent with an email that said there was a lot she hadn’t told them, and that it would be hard for them. Melissa told them to take all the time they needed, and she would understand if they weren’t able to talk to her for a while.
“I read [the book], and I thought, that can’t be true. I was shocked by what I found. I was truly a wreck for three weeks,” said Bob, who flew to New York and talked to Melissa for nine hours straight.
“I told her about how my heart was broken. First of all, my image of myself as a father was completely turned upside down. To find out my daughter was in so much trouble – deep trouble – and I didn’t even know about it. How could I have missed this?
“It’s heartbreaking to find out that you let your children down. That’s how I took it. I think I’m a little beyond that now, but I really felt that at the time.
“I also believed that we had a different relationship. I had no idea there was so much secrecy. I thought we were close – that we had a nice father-daughter relationship – and that was blown out of the water as well."
As a parent, Bob Febos had discussed drugs and sex with his kids; his own father was an abusive and violent alcoholic. He warned Melissa that marijuana took away ambition in developmental years and that she might be genetically predisposed toward addiction with other drugs.
“It was so important to me to live my life differently, to show my kids a much better way, so to then have addiction come back and hit me in the face through my [daughter] – it was stunning,” he said.
Melissa began doing drugs while going to Harvard, and it was a boyfriend who introduced her to intravenous drug use. That same boyfriend appeared uninvited at the book-release party on March 14 in New York City, a “total wreck.”
“That was a surreal experience,” said Melissa. “Intense. And sad.”
In retrospect, of course, Bob Febos questions if he made the right decisions. Sure, it was a little early for a kid to leave home – in Falmouth, Mass. – when they let her go at 16, but Melissa Febos wasn’t just any kid. She wrote her first book at age 8, starred as a solo puppeteer emcee for television at 12, and never gave him or his ex-wife cause to worry beyond normal pre-teen rebellion.
Besides, they might not have been able to hold her back if they’d tried.
“I never asked them what they thought,” said Melissa Febos. “It wasn’t really up for discussion. I had always sort of been that way. Make a big decision and then inform them of it.
“I think my parents did an amazing job, and I can’t think of anything they could have done differently that could have changed my experience.
“I regret the pain I caused them. It was through no fault of theirs."
Bob Febos is still coming to terms with his daughter’s story, yet he is pleased with the reaction thus far to her book. Melissa was recently interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR and is engaged in a multi-city book tour.
He’s also thankful and wants other parents to make note of his experience.
“When your child is excelling, you’re not looking for trouble. But don’t make assumptions.
"While I’m sitting here fretting over what the world may think of my daughter or of myself as a parent, I could just as easily be visiting her grave.
“That could be my reality right now, and I don’t want that to be anyone else’s reality. That’s why I’m doing the interview. I was lucky.”
And so was Melissa. Less than 10 percent of heroin addicts find recovery. Soon, Melissa will celebrate seven years of being clean and sober.

No comments on this item

Please log in to comment by clicking here

226 Adams Street Port Townsend, WA 98368
1-360-385-2900

Please wait...
We are checking your browser... grownandflown.com

Please stand by, while we are checking your browser...
Please enable Cookies and reload the page.
Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property.
If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware.
If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices.
Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. Check out the browser extension in the Firefox Add-ons Store .

Cloudflare Ray ID: 7283debf4ea29da8
•

Your IP:
Click to reveal
77.83.148.101
•

Performance & security by Cloudflare

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
"Now the president must resign," said one protester in Colombo. "If he wants peace to prevail, he must step down."
"Willow is a legacy setting project that will test whether the Biden administration is righting America's course from a dangerous climate path."
"By empowering Medicare to directly negotiate prices for prescription drugs Congress can end the days of seniors missing lifesaving medications because they cannot afford them," said Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
"It feels like the end of the movie, where the characters are bloodied and bedraggled with a Michael Bay explosion behind them," said one Twitter employee. "We could see this was coming, but in the meantime, he's fucking destroyed the company."
"Without wild species, our whole planet unravels," said one scientist in response to new U.N.-backed report.
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit | Privacy Policy
Quality journalism. Progressive values. Direct to your inbox.
Common Dreams will never be locked behind a paywall because we believe our journalism should remain freely available to everyone ― not just those who can afford to pay. By becoming a sustaining monthly donor today, you can help make sure our work remains free for those who aren't able to chip in.
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Oh my son’s my son till he gets him a wife, But my daughter’s my daughter all her life. — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Young and Old
I have received a number of inquiries from people who are interested in exotic estate planning techniques. Their inquiries were prompted by a relatively new estate planning technique explained and perhaps used by Daniel M. Bachi, an attorney in Florida who represents John Goodman. Mr. Goodman is the founder of the Polo Club Palm Beach in Florida and is a man of considerable wealth. The judge, who was involved in implementing the new strategy that Mr. Bachi invented, said the strategy bordered “on the surreal.” Such a description does not come as a surprise to lawyers who do estate planning since there are many techniques used by the more sophisticated among us that the less sophisticated would describe as surreal. Before describing the technique, however, a word about Mr. Goodman.
Mr. Goodman is presently a defendant in a civil wrongful death lawsuit in Florida that arose out of a car wreck that occurred in 2010. In addition to being a defendant in the civil action he is, according to The Palm Beach Post , facing criminal charges of DUI manslaughter, vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident. Both these matters arose because in February 2011 Mr. Goodman ran a stop sign, struck another car and killed the driver, Scott Wilson. When arrested Mr. Goodman had a blood alcohol level more than twice as high as the legal limit for driving while intoxicated in Florida.
Mr. Goodman is a very wealthy man. According to a statement released by Mr. Bachi on February 2, 2012, in 1991 Mr. Goodman created the JBG Children’s Trust and made a cash gift of just over $1.5 million to that trust. That trust is for the benefit of Mr. Goodman’s descendants. Thanks to shrewd investments made by the trustee the trust grew in value to more than $100 million during its first 7 years and today is worth several hundred million. According to Mr. Bachi, none of the trust assets is available to the plaintiffs in the civil action since the trust was set up years before the drunk driving incident and Mr. Goodman is not a beneficiary of the trust. So much for Mr. Goodman’s financial affairs. Now to his personal affair.
In 2009 Mr. Goodman began an affair with Heather Laruso Hutchins. That relationship gave Mr. Goodman so much pleasure that he wanted to strengthen it. One way he could have done that would have been to marry Ms. Hutchins, a step often taken by people who, during an affair, decide to make a more permanent commitment to each other. Mr. Goodman, however had already been in a marriage that ended in divorce and did not want to risk that a second time. And this is where the clever estate planning technique comes in. He adopted Ms. Hutchins, who was then 42 years of age, as his daughter.
The JBG Trust is said to be for the benefit of Mr. Goodman’s descendants. When created he had two minor children and they were the only trust beneficiaries. By adopting his mistress, she became his child and is now entitled to distributions from the trust just as Mr. Goodman’s other children are. Ms. Hutchins will presumably continue to live with Mr. Goodman, and he will now probably have the benefit of her share of any distributions made to beneficiaries of the trust since a dutiful daughter would certainly share with him if her father needed help. Mr. Bachi offers a different explanation for the adoption. He says she was made a beneficiary so she could influence actions of the corporate trustee in which Mr. Goodman no longer has confidence.
Ms. Hitchens signed an agreement with Mr. Goodman that is not customary in an adoption. In it she agrees that when the trust ends his natural children will get 95% of the trust assets. How he was able to change the terms of an irrevocable trust by a side agreement with his daughter is not explained.
Mr. Goodman probably assumes that no one is going to invoke Florida Statute 826.04 . That statute says that anyone engaging in sexual intercourse with someone related by “lineal consanguinity” is guilty of a felony of the third degree. It is impossible to know whether Mr. Goodman and Ms. Huthins are now engaged in a meretricious relationship or whether they have assumed a more typical father-daughter relationship. If the former, Mr. Goodman may soon find a charge of incest added to the other criminal charges now facing him. That is probably the least of his worries.
(Hugh Heffner may wish that Mr. Bachi had been his lawyer. On June 16, 2011 his 25-year-old fiancée, Crystal Harris, called off their wedding 5 days before the eagerly awaited event. Had Mr. Bachi been his lawyer he might have suggested that Hugh adopt Crystal. That would have enabled them to maintain the close relationship they had theretofore enjoyed without limiting her ability to enjoy other male companionship of the non-father daughter variety.)
Christopher Brauchli is a Common Dreams columnist and lawyer known nationally for his work. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Colorado School of Law where he served on the Board of Editors of the Rocky Mountain Law Review. For political commentary see his web page at humanraceandothersports.com .
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Common Dreams staff · Jul 9, 2022
We are independent, non-profit, advertising-free and 100% reader supported.
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Quality journalism. Progressive values. Direct to your inbox.
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.

An old man & his granddaughter - stories from my childhood
Persian class (Kilaas-e-farsi) — Part 1
Saying goodbye sooner than expected
Ways to Wait: #10 Waiting that Makes Room for Possibility
Factfulness — Why Things Are Better Than You Think
When I was a little girl, my grandfather (my mother’s father) would take me with him while he went grocery shoppi
Dick In Girl
Titti Fucker
Extreme Taboo Sex Stories

Dominant Daughter Stories

Report Page